Sunday, January 1, 2023

Gordon Clark: A Meditation (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1956. A Meditation. The Southern Presbyterian Journal, XV (23), October 3, pg. 4.

A Meditation

One day at noon I was walking home from the University. It had been raining off and on during the morning, and it was my first day back at teaching after a mild case of flu. Since I had neither umbrella nor auto, I had wondered an hour before about walking home. I did not want to get wet, and I did not want another case of flu.

But now at noon, although the sidewalks were still wet, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. As I crossed the campus in the smile of early spring, I thought how God was good to stop the rain so that I could get home comfortably.

Being a professor, however, I was also aware of what unbelievers might say if they had known my thoughts. Do you suppose, they would have said with scorn, that God turns off the rain just for you? Don't you know anything about meteorology? Don't you have any conception of natural law? It is ridiculous to think that God, if there is a God, adjusts the universe for the benefit of one person, or even for the human race as a whole.

Then I went on a few steps as a last cloud passed across the sun. Yes, it is true, I admitted to myself, that God does not turn on and off the rain just for my benefit, and possibly not just for the benefit of the human race as a whole. But, at the same time, though God may not have made the universe only for man, he made it entirely for man. His purposes may very well be wider than the affairs of the human race, but so intricate are his plans and so perfect that the whole conspires to let me walk home comfortably that particular day.

"The Lord... maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yet, I have a goodly heritage." (Psalm 16:5-6)

G.H.C.

 

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